Apparently, General Mills hasn’t been busy enough and recently started selling “Fruity Cherrios.” Consumers report that it “tastes just like Fruit Loops” while a single box contains less sugars that leading fruit cereals. The majority of spacing on the box is devoted to bragging how healthy the new cereal is. For some, the Fruity Cherrios ad campaign sold them on the bullshit. In one ad spot involves a kid who places Cheerios in his father’s jacket pockets so his father’s heart stays healthy. Come on, the ad is cute an all but I want something to sell me and not my great grandfather who’s busy shoveling in “Oats and Honey” to make his heart beat 3 - 4 more times a day.

Aww, well we love hilariously bad place online advertisements here at Caffeine Marketing. Found on CNN, this advertisement features a story in which a pregnant teen drank turpentine to abort her baby. Directly next to the story is an advertisement button for “Pure Gum Spirits Turpertine - Nature’s Solvent.” I would have to conclude this ad placement is even worse than the “Steve Irwin Dead on Ebay!” special Google was offering in it’s search results a few weeks ago. This fuck up is basically saying that turpertine is natures cure for quickly dissolving a human fetus! WHAT?! Thanks to Adrants for the screenshot.

Over the summer I saw a lady dressed up in a Statue of Liberty costume on the side of the road waving and holding a sign which read “honk if you love taxes” to promote the local Liberty Tax company. Having a crummy job might be bad but no one wants to look like a fool for minimum wage. Just look at the two unfortunate fools above who had to hand out fliers while earning minimum wage. I’m sure a few people even walked by and farted on the “Pootie Cushion.” Thanks to Thadeus Maximus.

I’ve tasted the Domino’s brownies and they taste like apeshit! Domino’s brownies, the stoner’s delicacy, found their way into my stomach yesterday after an on campus crew of cronnies from the local Dominos started handing out free samples. Having noticed the ads before and thinking nothing of them, I know want to barf everytime I see “Fudge’ems” on television promoting Dominos. A perfect promotional character to the crew of college students and stoners headed back to school this fall makes this Fudge’ems guy a good form of advertising. Kids love him and so do stoners! But after actually eating one of these mini-brownies I certainly don’t and neither doesn’t my porcelin friend.

The buck doesn’t stop there though. According to The Smoking Gun, a bunch of stoner kids were arrested after breaking into a Domino’s Pizza and baking brownies. Now why wouldn’t they just steal the brownies and bake them at home? Maybe, they we’re baked!

I can imagine the next “Fudge’ems” commercial will go a little like this:

“Dude, we should like TOTALLY go get that Fudge’ems dude at Dominos down the street and cook him like the Ginger Bread Man”

“Oh dude, don’t forget to bring my oven mitts!”

With the help of Gyro Worldwide, European jean company Lee Cooper will be launching their brand of jeans in the United States with a blue-collar approach to marketing. No doubt they’ll be plenty of sex, chocholate, and apple bottom butts in their advertising campaign. Check out a collection of print advertisements from the campaign.

You ever notice how when you watch an advertisement for a new pharmaceutical drug that they spend most of the time telling you things that will make you NOT want to buy it? Lobbying group PhRMA recently released a statement in which they received 284 messages from the public in which they blast their advertising practices. The majority of the messages sent in, 186, were related to the “guiding principles” of rules the group has in place for members to follow regarding direct to consumer advertising. What wasn’t released by PhRMA were the comments themselves. We cannot make a clear judgement on their positive or negative nature, however, not releasing them just spells “ouch” in our minds. The report shows that one comment actually stopped an advertising campaign but the PhRMA would not release for which drug company it was or the nature of the comment.

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Kohl’s Department store (yes, they’re still around) announced on Wednesday that they will be partnering up with the Food Network in the first ever exclusive retail deal with the popular tv network. The move by Kohl’s will open the door to an enourmous customer based of Food Network viewers eager to hear about the company’s kitchen products and tableware. The retail chain will carry the Food Network brandname on their kitchen and tableware products. This is only the first in a slew of deals that Kohl’s has recently made. Cable TV Network brands traditionally do not do well, Food Network products are expected to break that tradition and build a strong brand name.

Well isn’t this a site for sore eyes. We all know that with Google Maps you can scour the world looking at your own house or your neighbors from outerspace. But no one would’ve predicted seeing a giant bug on our planet!

Discovered at Google Sightseeing, this real bug was caught in a map of Germany when zoomed in on the German landscape.

A startling 3 out of 4 top executives at top newspaper companies are reporting that they are missing out on major online advertisinig opportunities because publishers aren’t working well together.

According to a study conducted by the American Press Institute, approximately 72% of those surveyed believe online advertising opportunities are being lost. Roughly 54% of those surveyed believe that newspapers should form partnerships with major non newspaper resource websites such as Yahoo, Google, or MSN. I’ve even heard talks about newspaper companies integrating with social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook to boost online ad potential.

Last year, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) was formed to develop standard procedures for advertising in newspapers online and offline. The head of NAA’s marketing department commented that he is “just begining to understand what those standards should be.”

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MySpace is busy developing a cell phone application that will allow the over 100,000,000 MySpace users log onto their account via their cell phone. The bold move could turn the company into what MySpace managers call a “$15 billion” move within the next few years. The move could be the driving force behind the mobile advertising innovations we are begining to see within the industry.

RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan had made the estimate of the website’s potential and basedÂ� his prediction “on the site’s massive international appeal, capacity to become an intelletual property distribution powerhouse.” Rohan will be developing the project which should be ready within 3 - 4 months in the USA. Continue Reading >>

Old school ads with a 1970s touch bring these Playstation 2 advertisements to life. Sure, they have the appearence of a dull, old, and worn out magazine paper to them. However, the vintage theme in advertising is in and many companies like Priceline and Gap Jeans are using vintage advertising in their commercials. I love how they put the people in these advertisements below in really wacky situations with the tag line “fun anyone?”

Forget Microsoft. Starbucks is being sued by an independent coffee shop called Belvi Coffee whose research concludes that the company holds 73% of market share in the coffee industry in America. They then follow up that remark by saying “AT LEAST 73%.” The lawsuit also claims that Starbucks leases top level real estate to gain exclusivity as an espresso and speciality coffee shop in those areas. Belvi Coffee topped off their lawsuit by claiming Starbuck’s employees would stand outside their shop and hand out free samples to passerbys and people leaving the Belvi Coffee Read the rest of this entry »

A company called In-Store Media announced they have developed a new way of increasing marketer’s return on investment. From the company’s press release, it was found after surveying 15,167 consumers that product sampling topped the list as the most influential purchasing decision maker. A close second and third, reading product labels and shelf coupons also had a large impact.

Developed by Wit / Atlanta Agnecy, this print advertisement for Atlanta Pet Research & Adoption is too adorable to not post. The ad features a grizzled old pooch with youthful puppy dog eyes just yearning for you to adopt him.

Back to school on college campuses are a time filled with buying textbooks, cliffnotes, new clothes, and condoms of course!

For the condom industry, back to school means higher sales and a golden opportunity. Yes, with thousands of freshmen girls and guys arriving on every campus across the country, the love birds are chirppin’ and lust will be in the air. It’s a good bet then that condom makers spit as much advertising out as they can around this event.

Some condom makers will influence purchases with sexually transmitted disease information. “A third of condoms are purchased by college-age students,” said Jim Daniels the Vice President of Trojan Condoms. “Therefore it’s a very important target. Very often people become sexually active during those years.” Luckily, for college students like myself, condoms are available by the bag-load. I’ve attended three major universities and am now in my senior year. Every dormatory I’ve lived in has a ‘Hall Monitor’ who holds hundreds of condoms in their room available any time of the day, free of charge. Sounds like the condom industry found their golden market.

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